Controlled choice and at least a rough map of what the new community assignment zones could look like will be on today's Wake County student assignment committee agenda.
Today's meeting will include what's being billed as a "review of various geographic assignment area possibilities." Much of the talk will likely revolve around maps of potential zones being presented by staff.
Growth & Planning were asked by the committee to use as a starting point the high school feeder patterns. From there, they'd see what middle schools feed into the high schools and what elementary schools feed into those middle schools.
Expect a lot of disclaimers today that the boundaries for the maps aren't necessarily what the school board will use in the new zones.
Also on today's agenda, student assignment consultant Michael Alves will speak with the committee. Controlled choice as a way of achieving diversity will probably take up most of the questioning.
As noted in last week's article by Thomas Goldsmith, the idea of controlled choice is drawing favorable remarks from school board members on both factions.
But a blog post last week by the conservative John Locke Foundation criticized Alves, who is being brought in by the Wake Education Partnership and the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce.
The meeting starts at 11:30 a.m. in the board conference room, 3600 Wake Forest Road in Raleigh.
Comments
Keung, Are you going to
Tue, 07/27/2010 - 15:08 — shank56Keung,
Are you going to post the handouts?
Caught the end of the meeting when Tedesco mentioned "the public" grabbing the draft maps and heading out the door. He did suggest WCPSS staff post the info online.
At some point.
Tue, 07/27/2010 - 15:39 — KeungHui (author)At some point.
I've been driving around
Tue, 07/27/2010 - 10:03 — shearertwI've been driving around Wake Co. a lot recently. Not that I haven't done so before but it's been refreshed in my mind that this county is ENORMOUS! 857 square miles to be exact. The state of Rhode Island is only 1,214 square miles and actually has less people (I think). I was in far north Wake Co. Sunday night driving home to Holly Springs and it took me almost one hour with no traffic. I cannot believe we try and have one school system cover this area, not to mention the vast diversity you see from urban Raleigh to the rural outskirts. No voluntary (basically voluntary anyway) BOE or single school system can handle this great of an area effectively. This is not the county of the 1970's when that decision was made.
Please, somebody get some since and develop some type of zone assignment model at the very least.
Controlled Choice Plans
Tue, 07/27/2010 - 09:49 — jkjkjkIt will be interesting to see the actual proposal, however from what I read the controlled choice isn't really a neighborhood schools plan, at least not for everyone. As I understand it the choice remains with the school system, and parents indicate a set of preferences, which are then either approved or not by the school system in order to meet whatever goals for the school population the system has chosen to focus upon. The 'zones' define the set of choices that you are allowed to pick from when declaring your preferences, and may (or may not) be close to your neighborhood.
http://www.tcf.org/Publications/Education/fiske.pdf http://www.champaignschools.org/FICchoice.html http://www.ericdigests.org/1992-4/choice.htm
"Controlled choice plans do away with neighborhood attendance districts, create zones, and allow families to choose within their zone, provided that admitting students to their school of choice does not upset the racial and ethnic balance at that school"